Publications by authors named "Erwin Wang"

Article Synopsis
  • - Quality assessment organizations use various patient safety measures to evaluate hospitals, but these assessments can create significant burdens for health systems.
  • - The Braden score is a bedside evaluation tool typically used to assess the risk of pressure injuries, and this study suggests it could be effective in predicting other adverse outcomes like mortality and infections.
  • - The research indicates that abnormal Braden scores correlate with several negative health outcomes, highlighting the potential of this low-cost tool to quickly identify high-risk patients and improve overall patient safety despite advancements in technology.
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Importance: Hospital consolidations have been shown not to improve quality on average.

Objective: To assess a full-integration approach to hospital mergers based on quality metrics in a safety net hospital acquired by an urban academic health system.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This quality improvement study analyzed outcomes for all nonpsychiatric, nonrehabilitation, non-newborn patients discharged between September 1, 2010, and August 31, 2019, at a US safety net hospital that was acquired by an urban academic health system in January 2016.

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Background: Standard urine sampling and testing techniques do not mitigate against detection of colonization, resulting in false positive catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). We aimed to evaluate whether a novel protocol for urine sampling and testing reduces rates of CAUTI.

Methods: A preintervention and postintervention study with a contemporaneous control group was conducted at 2 campuses (test and control) of the same academic medical center.

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Background & Aims: Our understanding of malignancy associated with immunosuppression in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) comes from studies of individuals with no history of cancer. We investigated whether patients with IBD and a history of cancer who were subsequently immunosuppressed have an increased risk of developing incident cancer.

Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of data from 333 patients with IBD treated at 8 academic medical centers who developed cancer and subsequently received treatment with anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF), anti-TNF with an antimetabolite (thiopurines, methotrexate), antimetabolites, or no subsequent exposure to immunosuppressive agents (controls).

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Objective: Evaluate the effect of a modest financial incentive on time-to-discharge summary dictation among medicine residents.

Background: Pay-for-performance incentives are used in a number of health care settings. Studies are lacking on their use with medical residents and other trainees.

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Among the hypotheses discussing cancer formation, the cancer stem cell (CSC) theory is one receiving widespread support. One version of this theory states that changes in otherwise healthy cells can cause formation of tumor- initiating cells (TICs), which have the potential to create precancerous stem cells that can lead to CSC formation. These CSCs can be rare, in contrast to their differentiated progeny, which give rise to the vast majority of the tumor mass in most cancers.

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